Obese women who have the tendency of skipping their breakfast on a regular basis may soon be prone to the risk of type 2 diabetes as they develop a spike in insulin and glucose levels, found a new study.

Thus eating small portions of breakfast every day may reduce the risk of diabetes in overweight women suggests a recent study.

Study led by Elizabeth Thomas:
The lead author of the study, Elizabeth Thomas, an endocrinology fellow at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, said, “Our study found that acute insulin resistance developed after only one day of skipping breakfast,”.

“It’s possible that insulin resistance over time may predispose to further metabolic derangements and possibly progression to type two diabetes”, said Elizabeth Thomas.

As explained by her, women who skipped their morning breakfast developed a condition called insulin resistance in which the person in order to bring the blood sugar into normal range requires more insulin.

During the course of the study, they found out that skipping of the morning meal increased insulin resistance in a short term basis, however this can also lead to a high risk of diabetes if the condition is chronic, said Thomas.

Study details:
To collaborate the findings of the study, 10 women aged between 25 to 40 years were considered. They all had similar body mass. Out of the 10, 2 women were made to skip their breakfast and their insulin resistance was assessed separately with a gap of one month. This also corresponded with the follicular phase of their menstrual cycle.

In order to carry out the assessments, the women were asked to skip exercise and were provided with dinner the previous day to help them gain at least 35% of their total daily energy.

Few of the women were made to eat breakfast with almost the same nutritional content while the rest were instructed to drink a glass of water. This condition was reversed during the second meeting of the study, where the women who ate breakfast, drank water and the rest who drank water, ate breakfast.

Findings:
It was found that the insulin levels remained the same among both the groups of the women before lunch, however after lunch there was drastic spike in the insulin and the glucose levels among women who did not have their breakfast.

Right after eating a meal, glucose levels rises which in-turn leads to the production of insulin thus helping the cells to take in the glucose and convert it into energy.

Thomas explained, “they required a higher level of insulin to handle the same meal.”, on the day they did not have their breakfast.

She also stated, “There was a 28 percent increase in the insulin response and a 12 percent increase in the glucose response after skipping breakfast,”, which is a mild rise in glucose and a moderate rise in insulin, noted Thomas.

The data and the conclusions of the study are still in the preliminary phase and will be soon published in a journal. Elizabeth Thomas’s findings of the study will soon be presented Endocrine Society’s 95th annual meeting in San Francisco this weekend.

“This information should help health care providers in counselling patients as to why it is better to eat a healthy, balanced breakfast than to skip breakfast,” said Thomas.

Dr. Joel Zonszein, a professor of clinical medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and director of the Clinical Diabetes Center at Montefiore Medical Center, in New York City said, “Their study doesn’t prove causation,Studies done in Europe have shown that a large meal in the middle of the day is better than a large meal at dinner,”.

Dr. Ping Wang, director of the University of California, Irvine, Health Diabetes Centre said, “This is a small, but very interesting, study, the findings will have to be verified with larger studies.”

The effects of the study has still been confirmed on a long term basis yet.

Thus the experts advised eating of small portions of breakfast to reduce the risk of diabetes. Dr. Zonszein also suggested his patients to have a good breakfast, a good lunch and a very light dinner.

Diabetes can also be controlled by controlling excess weight gain, blood pressure and cholesterol and keeping yourself physically active.

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